Frederick Browning

Frederick "Boy" Browning (20 December 1896-14 March 1965) was a Lieutenant-General of the British Army who famously commanded the British I Airborne Corps during Operation Market Garden in World War II.

Biography
Frederick Arthur Montague Browning was born in Kensington, London, England on 20 December 1896. He was educated at Eton College and Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and he was commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant in the grenadiers in 1915. Browning fought on the Western Front of World War I and received the Distinguished Service Order for conspicuous gallantry at the November 1917 Battle of Cambrai. In September 1918, he became the aide de camp to General Henry Rawlinson, and he competed in the bobsleigh in the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, with his team placing tenth.

World War II


Browning was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1936 and to Major-General in 1941, and he was given command of the British 1st Airborne Division, later assuming command of the British I Airborne Corps as a whole. Browning commanded the corps during Operation Market Garden, an operation that he fully supported and staunchly defended; he ignored warnings from the Dutch Resistance and G-2 intelligence officer Brian Urquhart about the presence of German armor near Arnhem, claiming that he was not about to "rock the boat" after 16 delayals of the operation's execution. The operation ended in disaster, and Browning later commented that Bernard Montgomery had wanted the Allies to take "a bridge too far". In December 1944, he became chief of staff of Louis Mountbatten's Southeast Asia command, and he served as Military Secretary of the War Office from 1946 to 1948. He later worked for the treasury, and he suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1957 and retired two years later. He died at the mansion of Menabilly in 1965 at the age of 68.